Uber opens new engineering facility in Hyderabad

Hyderabad, Nov 16 : The world's leading taxi aggregator Uber has opened a new engineering facility in Hyderabad, its second in India.

The company has hired over 40 engineers to build what it calls world-class business intelligence platforms and real time streaming for Uber globally.

Spread over 18,000 square feet, the facility has come up in Kondapur in HiTec City, the IT hub here.

This is the latest vertical added by Uber, which opened its first Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Asia here last year. The city also houses Uber's maps team and city operations team.

The CoE, which opened with 350 employees, has now grown to 2,000 people, making Hyderabad the company's largest centre outside its headquarters in San Francisco, said Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries and Commerce, and Information Technology Departments of the Telangana government.

Daniel Graf, Vice President and Head of Product, Uber, said the firm was changing the lives of people around the world.

"Today we doing over 10 million trips a day. Every trip is touched by technology which is developed by our team here in Hyderabad as well," he said.

The company has over two million driver partners globally including 450,000 in India. The number in Hyderabad is 35,000 and they are doing a million rides every week.

US Consul General in Hyderabad, Katherine Hadda, hailed the continued commitment from Uber, the world's most valuable startup in Telangana.

"This is a reflection of strong US-India tech collaboration. The talent pool in India coupled with the government's initiatives to ensure ease of doing business in Hyderabad is attracting many US companies to set up operations here," she said.

At Uber's CoE here, a team of 500 specialists provide support via multiple channels-email, phone and social media to ensure seamless experience before, during and after the ride.

The company has engineering centres in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Amsterdam, Sofia in Bulgaria, Aarhus in Denmark, Vilnius in Lithuania, Bengaluru and now in Hyderabad.